


Get Rid Of Me If You Try

by ishie



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: bigbangbigbang, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penny Wade's life is pretty much in free-fall. She got fired from what was supposed to be her big break -- after two whole days. Caught her husband in bed with her agent. Had to slink back to waitressing full-time so she doesn't lose her house. Now she's basically been kidnapped by a crazy man with a box, and it's not even the cool TV-show kind of crazy man with a box. If she makes it through the week without killing someone, it will be a miracle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [bigbangbigbang](http://bigbangbigbang.livejournal.com/) 2011; this has been, without equal, the toughest writing I've ever done in my life. All the thanks in the world to inkdot, muir_wolf, and sinstralpride for being amazing. If any of the seams show, it's because I didn't listen to their advice. A couple of phrases and technobabble are stolen from _Parks & Recreation_, _Star Trek_ , _Doctor Who_ and _Back to the Future_ because I couldn't resist; the lines at the beginning are from BBT 1x01; some minor characters and a location are partially based on the saddest job I ever had; and everyone you recognize is someone else's intellectual property, more's the pity.
> 
> See the [GORGEOUS ART](http://users.livejournal.com/__hibiscus/200921.html) by __hibiscus!

> **Sheldon:** You know, I've been thinking about time travel again.
> 
>  **Leonard:** Why? Did you hit a roadblock with invisibility?
> 
>  **Sheldon:** Put it on the back burner. Anyway, it occurs to me, if I ever did perfect a time machine I'd go into the past and give it to myself. Thus eliminating the need for me to invent it in the first place.

 ****

I

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry!" Penny yanked her cart back, crashing it into the shelves on the other side of the aisle.

Dozens of cans cascaded to the floor around the cart to bounce into each other and roll in every direction. Penny picked her way over to the man she'd knocked down, who still hadn't made a move to get up. Visions of small-claims court danced in her head.

"Are you okay? I totally didn't even see you there!"

"No, you wouldn't have," he agreed, surprisingly happy for someone who'd just been flattened by a cart full of frozen pizzas and margarita mix. To himself, he muttered, "Huh, it even converts what I'm wearing. That was unexpected."

He ignored the hand she held out to help him to his feet and tapped at the outdated phone he was carrying. It was about five times as big as her iPhone, a real brick of a thing, with a dull silver sheen that made her think of a luxury car for some reason. Something James Bond would drive, maybe.

The guy was about as far from James Bond as she could imagine, though. His dark hair was cut short and brushed flat against his scalp like an old man's. Hunched over as he was on the floor, every bump of his spine was prominent under his garishly striped orange and purple shirt. His pants were corduroy, the color somewhere between gold and brown with wide-set wales that went so far past vintage she could almost imagine Ronald Reagan wearing them. They were too short for his long legs, too. His bright white athletic socks practically glowed under the fluorescent lights.

She felt stupid for still standing there with her hand outstretched while he continued to tap away. "Uh, can I help you up or something? Should I call a manager? Are you hurt?"

"No, thank you. This is precisely what I anticipated would happen. Well, maybe not precisely. I didn't factor in the cans." He made a noise like a bird, jabbed a finger at something on the side of the phone, and vanished.

Penny stumbled backwards. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. A loud buzzy, humming noise filled the aisle, like a choir of kazoos. "What the hell?"

"May I have your name?" the man's voice asked from somewhere. It sounded like he was in three different places at once. "You won't be named in my acceptance speech of course, but—"

Penny shook her head. "Jesus, I have got to quit drinking," she muttered. Either she was finally going as crazy as everyone said she was, or she'd somehow stumbled into some stupid _Punk'd_ knockoff. Whatever the hell was going on, she wanted less than nothing to do with any of it.

The store was deserted, just flickering fluorescents and the low rumble of the coolers to keep her company as she wrestled her cart out of the shelf it had lodged itself against and wheeled away. It had already been a long day, a back-to-back double shift at the diner. The eighth in a row. The tips got smaller the longer she worked, but it was better than sitting around at home worrying about whether she'd have enough to cover the alimony checks that never seemed to make it out of the mailbox Kurt always swore he'd dropped them in.

The very last thing she needed was for some asshole with a hidden camera to make her look like an idiot. Like even _more_ of an idiot.

Her feet throbbed, toes rubbed raw from the cheap black tennis shoes that had about as much arch support as a Kleenex. All she wanted was enough food to keep her from starving to death and enough alcohol to make her forget that in thirty-six hours she'd have to start the whole painful cycle all over again.

The Ralphs on Colorado was a good twenty minutes out of the way on her drive home on a good night, but at least it was quiet. Mostly it was quiet, except for the nights when one of the older cashiers was working. The woman was usually good for at least ten minutes of uninterrupted monologues about her son-in-law, her bunions, her bum hip, the rain, the lack of rain, or whatever else had gotten her in a lather that day.

The hum got louder as Penny hurried down the main aisle toward the door she'd come in. By the time she got to the self-checkout lanes, an acrid burning smell was clawing at her nose, as if someone was burning leaves in aisle seven. Homesickness followed in its wake as the smell brought up memories of the bite in the air and the scratchy sweaters the cheerleading squad got to wear for home game bonfires in high school.

 _Maybe I should just give up and go home once the divorce papers are processed._ Her mom had been talking around it for weeks but Penny still felt like California was where she belonged, creepy late-night practical jokes and all.

She unloaded the cart with half her attention on the empty store behind her in case the weird guy decided to jump out from behind the dog food display with a digital camera in tow.

Nothing moved except a few signs that swayed in the air-conditioned breeze, but the longer she stood at the scanner, the more uncomfortable she felt. Hair lifted on the back of her neck and she had to choke back a yelp when the register beeped a warning signal when she waved the six-pack over the sensor.

No one emerged from the service desk or the office to check her ID or remove the hold on her lane. Any other night, Penny would have cooled her heels flipping through the latest tabloids until a clerk showed up but the creepy feeling was getting harder to ignore with every minute she lingered. Every true crime marathon that had ever sucked her in on a lazy Saturday started playing into her head. Every Lifetime movie and very special episode, every accidental trip through Wikipedia's serial killer section, every whispered conversation when someone didn't show up for her shift at the diner....

"Oh, fuck it," Penny swore. She jabbed the pay now button and swiped her card, her usual semi-careful signature abandoned in favor of an illegible scrawl. Something broke with a loud crack when she slung her bags back into the cart but she ignored it. Halfway out to the car, she realized she was still holding the six-pack.

For just a second, Penny wanted to turn back. Even at her most delinquent, she never _stole_ anything. Well, nothing more expensive than a box of condoms, or—

Somewhere in the dark parking lot, a door slammed shut.

Until the buzz came roaring back, Penny hadn't noticed that it had faded. Now it lifted the hair on the back of her neck again. She let the cart crash into the side of her car and fumbled in the pocket of her hoodie for her keys.

 _should've had them out already—keys between the fingers like spikes—heel of the hand to the nose—screw the groceries—oh God oh just let me get out of here just let me go go go_

The lock jammed when Penny yanked on the handle. Her heart kicked painfully, thick and heavy against her breastbone, sucking all the breath out of her lungs. It felt like another thirty years had passed by the time the door finally creaked open. She started tossing bags into the back seat, not particularly caring if the soup landed on the bread or if the eggs would survive the trip home.

There was a soft sound behind her, the barest scrape of something across the asphalt, and a voice.

"You should—"

Penny grabbed the first thing she could out of the cart and swung it hard. It was a huge jug of margarita mix, the biggest one Ralphs carried, and made a satisfying _thunk_ when it connected with whoever had spoken.

Some tiny corner of her brain that hadn't given in to panic sent a quick surge of triumph singing through her.

The loud " _Ow!_ " was still ringing around the lot as Penny scrambled into the driver's seat and pulled the door closed behind her. The plastic jug still in her hand smacked against the gear shift. She dropped it into the footwell on the passenger side. The sharp smell of citrus burst in her nose.

"Come on come on come on," she urged the engine as it slowly cranked to life. _Two more paychecks_ , she thought wildly. Two paychecks was all she needed. Two more paychecks and she could afford to trade the car in for another piece of crap that would start more than fifty percent of the time.

For a split second, the panic receded. In its place was the same bitter anger she'd been nursing for months. At Kurt, at herself, at the universe at large. If it hadn't been for a canceled rehearsal, the player's strike, an accident that snarled traffic on the 405, the busted faucet Kurt had said he could fix himself.... If she'd listened to her gut, or her mom and dad, or anything but Kurt's continued promises that he could change. Any one of a thousand different things could have led Penny to somewhere else, anywhere else in the world.

When she turned the key again, even the chugging noise was dead. The starter clicked in rapid succession and then it died, too. Scanning the parking lot with quick jerky motions of her head, Penny still couldn't see anyone approaching, but her hands were starting to shake from the adrenaline spike. There was no sound but her own ragged breaths and the hum of the security lights high overhead.

If just one single moment had taken a different turn, maybe she wouldn't be about to be kidnapped and strangled by some weedy psycho in a grocery store parking lot because her piece of shit _car wouldn't start_!

Panic wasn't going to do her any good, she realized. She tried to calm her breathing. In and out, nose and mouth, like every yoga class she'd ever dropped after three sessions. She tried the ignition again and the engine chugged slowly. After a second it suddenly roared to life, rocking the car slightly.

Penny whooped in relief and dropped the transmission into gear. As she lurched forward, scraping the side panel against the cart she'd abandoned, there was a loud _bang_ and the windshield exploded.

Ragged chunks of glass rained down on the dashboard. She threw up her hands as some bounced off the hard plastic and up into her face. One stung across the skin at her temple and warm blood started to ooze down her cheek. The passenger door popped open as the car bounced over the concrete island at the end of the row. It slammed shut again when Penny jammed her foot down on the gas and the car leapt forward.

The adrenaline rush was long gone by the time she slowed. The shaking in her hands had turned to full-on tremors, like Grandpa's after the stroke. Her head felt like it was full of Coke and Pop-Rocks; the fizzing spread all the way through her body, to the tips of her fingers and back again before settling in her head.

"Pull over here," a voice demanded.

Penny screamed and stepped on the brake so hard she was practically standing up out of her seat. There was a soft _thunk_ from the passenger seat. As she watched, a piece of glass lifted off the dashboard to hover in mid-air. Almost as if it were stuck to something.

She reached out one shaking hand and swallowed another scream when the tip of her finger touched something, even though there was nothing there. Spreading her fingers, she recognized the feel of cloth over someone's upper arm and shoulder. Her head started to spin when the arm moved under her touch.

The piece of glass jerked a few inches then dropped to the floorboard.

"I think I'm bleeding," the voice said. It was a man's voice, somewhat familiar, though it sounded shakier than it had just a few seconds earlier.

 _Maybe he's in shock_ , Penny thought. A buzzing filled the air again. Pressure built in her ears and sinuses. Her vision started to blur, turning the interior of the car hazy and indistinct, like something out of a bad Lifetime movie.

 _Maybe_ I _am_.

It had to be shock. Or maybe she was dreaming it. Maybe she'd been the one to fall in the store and all of this was because a can of tomatoes had landed on her temple.

She blinked hard when the buzzing noise spiked and black spots started to dance on the edges of her vision. Her stomach lurched as everything rippled.

Under her hand, a blue sleeve appeared without warning, followed quickly by the arm that filled it. Attached to it was the man she'd hit with her cart in the store.

Her fingers tightened, as if to hold onto him so he wouldn't disappear again, an impulse she didn't entirely understand. She should be reaching past to shove the door open to kick him out, but her brain and body had severed all ties, it seemed.

For one brief second, Penny wondered if someone had spiked her bottle of water at the diner. Her head felt like it was filled with mud. If she had been drugged, it would at least explain why she was apparently hallucinating.

The man in her passenger seat pressed his fingers to his hairline and blew out a quick breath from his nose when they came away bloody.

She dug into the soft flesh on the underside of his arm with her fingernails, stubby and ragged from too many shifts filling in for a missing busboy.

"Who are you?"

"I _am_ bleeding." The man tried to wrench his arm away but Penny held on tight. With a grunt of frustration, he used his other hand to twist the rearview mirror until it turned enough to show his reflection. He dropped his phone in his lap and pressed his fingers to the tiny cut that was oozing a slowly expanding bubble of blood, like a mosquito bite he couldn't stop picking.

"Where's your first aid kit?" he demanded.

Even if her mind hadn't been a total blank, she couldn't have told him. She had a vague memory of seeing one in her trunk once, but that might have been an entire car ago. Maybe even the one she'd driven in high school. "Uh..."

"I suppose it's too much to expect that you'd be prepared for an emergency. Even now."

Another burst of panic fluttered in her chest. She dropped his arm and leaned as far away as she could. The door handle dug into the small of her back as she tried to remember if her softball bat was still wedged under the seat.

"Who _are_ you? How did you get in here?"

Something like surprise rippled across his face before he caught himself and frowned instead. "Oh, right," he said, almost to himself, "you just—"

"I just _what_?" Penny made a fist and braced herself, ready to smash his face in if he made any sudden moves.

His sudden smile sent a chill racing down her spine. It was all teeth and the whites of his eyes, tendons corded in his neck.

"This is all a misunderstanding," he said. His face hardly moved. If he was trying for non-creepy, he was missing the mark by about ten miles. "I'm Sheldon Cooper, _Doctor_ Cooper, and—"

Sheldon, if that was his real name, leaned forward. Just an inch or two. Just enough for Penny's instincts to finally overcome the stranglehold her sluggish brain had on them. He was just close enough for her fist to slam into his jaw.

Or, he would have been, if he hadn't ducked to the side at the very last possible second.

"And I need your help."

Her hand slammed into the headrest behind him instead. Shaking out the sting, she finally leaned over him and flipped the lock. "Okay, I'm going to say no. Get out."

Sheldon reached to unbuckle his seatbelt, which had never been fastened in the first place, and blinked in confusion. "Oh, that's right. I forgot to...."

"Well, too bad," Penny said, concentrating on keeping her voice hard and not shaking. She was also trying to surreptitiously fish her phone out of the space between her seat and the gearshift where it had fallen earlier that night. "Now get out."

He put his hand on the door handle. "Can I explain—"

"No. Out. Before I call the cops." She held the phone up between them like a weapon. A totally useless weapon wrapped in bright pink flowered neoprene, but still.

"Who do you think was shooting at us?"

Penny's jaw dropped open. "You're running from the cops?"

"No," Sheldon said. He plucked the phone from her hands and pulled up a screen she'd never even seen before. A few quick gestures with his thumbs and he handed it back.

On the screen was a picture of a trio of people sitting at a round table with a gaudy centerpiece. In the center was Sheldon, in a truly terrible turquoise cowboy suit, glassy-eyed and smirking at the camera and cradling a trophy of some kind. To his right was a smaller, dark-haired man. His features were blurred, as the camera had caught him in the process of turning to the woman on his right.

"Joyce Kim," Sheldon said. "And her boyfriend, my roommate: Leonard Hofstadter."

"Great, you look very happy together. What's your point?" She scrolled the page down to see that the photo caption matched what he'd said. _2010 recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Physics_ , whatever that was.

"Joyce Kim is who was shooting at us."

Penny cocked her head to one side. "Did you sleep with her boyfriend?"

"No!" Sheldon squawked.

"You slept with her?"

" _No_ , she works for the North Korean government. She wants this," he held up his enormous phone. "And my head, presumably."

"And...?"

He narrowed his eyes, like he didn't understand what she was getting at. "And I don't want to give her either one."

"So, okay, here's an idea: _don't_. And get out of my car!"

"She'll kill me, Penny!"

"Then let me call the cops—"

He snorted, and she realized with a start that he'd used her name, which she was sure she hadn't told him. When she stiffened and her thumb slipped over the phone's screen, he pointed at her chest, "Nametag."

Headlights swept over his face as someone pulled out of a driveway up the block. Without stopping to think, Penny threw the car into gear and peeled out, blowing through the stop sign and swinging wildly around the corner. She didn't know if it was possible that this Joyce Kim or whoever had followed them, or if that was even who had shot out her window, but she wasn't going to stick around to find out.

"You've got five minutes to convince me," she said as she made a beeline for home. "Start talking."

  


\---

  
They were still arguing when she pulled into her own driveway.

"Look, I don't get why someone would _shoot at you_ because of a cell phone! Especially such an old, crappy one," Penny insisted.

It just flat out didn't make any sense. The watch Sheldon was wearing was worth at least half of what she brought home from the diner in a week. The giant brick in his hand was worthless. But it was hard to argue with the conviction in his voice. _He_ believed every word of it, even if she didn't.

"It's not a cell phone. It's an interocitor."

"What the hell is that?"

"It's this." He waved the device, like that was going to help.

"But what is it?" she gritted out.

He said it again, much slower this time, like she was an idiot for not keeping up. Well, compared to him, maybe she was. That didn't mean he had to be such a dick about it.

When her glare deepened, Sheldon shied away and hunched his shoulder as if to block any attack she tried to make.

"What does it do?" she bit out.

This time the look he leveled was definitely meant to tell her she was an idiot. "It makes me invisible."

"And me brain-damaged, apparently, because _duh_."

That was his turn to start glaring. "How many times—! There's no evidence that it causes any kind of neurological trauma! It's an incredibly complex device that only two people on the planet have any hope of understanding."

 _Whatever._ If Penny wanted to be insulted every time someone opened his mouth, she'd ask Kurt to move back in. She looked out the window again, barely twitching the curtain aside. All the cars parked along the street were the same familiar ones she saw everyday. There was no one skulking in the bushes, no one loitering under a streetlight. Just a normal Thursday night, except for the shattered windshield on her car and the nasty scrapes on both sides.

Penny swept her hands through her hair to dislodge any glass that might still be stuck there.

"Where'd you get it?" A minivan turned the corner and crawled down the street. Brake lights flashed as it paused near entrance house up the block. Two kids tumbled out of its sliding door. As they ran across the lawn, the van rumbled forward again, faster now. Penny let the curtain drop.

Sheldon was fiddling with the thingy again. "I didn't get it anywhere," he said, a faint hint of indignation in his voice. "I made it."

"Well, la-di-dah," Penny breathed. "Look, if you want to clean up, the bathroom's down that hall."

He grunted something instead of answering. Within seconds he was completely engrossed in the device.

Maybe he didn't want to clean up, but she certainly did. She always felt disgusting after a shift at the diner, and especially so tonight, so she left him to it and went into her room to change. Her shirt was already over her head when she realized that maybe getting mostly naked in the house with a mostly demented, possibly harmless stranger wasn't such a great idea. The click of the flimsy lock on her door seemed louder than a gunshot and she held her breath for a second, hoping the noise didn't stir Sheldon into some kind of serial killer frenzy.

There were two quick, loud buzzes from the living room, then nothing but silence. It made her feel marginally better about whipping off the rest of her clothes and shimmying into the biggest pair of sweatpants and the baggiest old t-shirt of Kurt's she could find.

When she opened the door, Sheldon almost hit her in the face with a clenched fist.

She screamed. He yelped and backed away. She kicked him.

"What are you doing?!" they yelled in unison. Penny kicked him again for good measure and jumped back inside her room, slamming the door. Her hands were shaking so hard she couldn't flip the lock so she threw her whole body against it. It wouldn't do much if he tried to break through—he had a good six inches and maybe twenty pounds on her, though it was mostly scrawn and not brawn—but it might slow him down.

She scanned the room looking for something she could use as a weapon. Her cell phone was still in her purse where she'd dropped it next to the front door—Kurt had gotten rid of the landline not long after they moved in—and the contents of the bedroom were about as useless as she felt.

The bat! It hadn't been in the car; she'd swiped a hand under each seat as she unloaded the groceries and came up empty. She had a faint memory of carrying it through the living room one night and leaving it propped next to the door when a noise had woken her in the middle of the night. Fat lot of good it did now.

The door shimmied behind her.

"I just wanted to know if you can drive me back to the grocery store," Sheldon called. His voice was hardly muffled at all and she wondered if he had his face pressed to the wood just behind her head.

"What?"

"We're in Glendale, aren't we? And you're Penny Wade. I saw it on your mail." He paused for breath. "You really shouldn't leave sensitive mail out where anyone could read it."

"I _didn't_."

He went on like she hadn't spoken, starting to sound a bit frantic. "I can't take the bus from here. I'll have to transfer three times before I get to a route that goes by my apartment building. But if you drive me back to the store, or to any of the bus stops that service the 260, then I won't have to transfer at all."

She wondered if it was a trick to lure her out. And whether he actually was an escaped mental patient, despite his repeated denials on the drive home from the store.

"If you let me use your computer I can look up the bus routes. I'm not familiar with this area. I prefer being south of the freeway. There's much less traffic."

Another pause.

"But it would be easiest for everyone if you just take me back to the store. I normally enjoy walking but tonight I don't—"

Penny couldn't take it anymore. She swung the door open again. This time Sheldon backed away, fast, two giant steps to take him well out of kicking range.

"Are you insane?"

He bristled.

"Why would you want to go back to where _somebody tried to shoot you_? And my car! You cut your head on my windshield not even half an hour ago." She smacked her own forehead in frustration.

"Oh." He touched the skin at his hairline as if to remind himself it was there. "Right. The... shooting...?"

With no further warning, his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped to the floor in a dead faint.

  


\---

  
For the first couple of minutes, Penny had tried to rouse Sheldon from his faint. When calling his name and smacking his cheeks didn't work, she went into the bathroom for a cup of water to splash in his face.

So, of course, he had woken up by the time she got back. _Damn_.

"Penny," she said, touching her chest as she set the cup down on her dresser. "Glendale, shot at, crazy man."

"What?" Sheldon screwed up his face so hard it was practically inside-out. "Do you have some kind of brain injury?"

"Do you?"

He gasped and gathered his hands together in front of his chest. " _Do_ I?"

Penny threw up her hands. "How should I know!"

"How do I know you aren't working with the North Koreans?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about," she exploded. "Not a damn thing has made any sense since I hit you with my cart!"

Sheldon's face suddenly broke into a self-satisfied grin, as if she'd uttered some kind of secret password that unlocked it.

"That's right. I finally got the interocitor to work!"

And that was the last thing that Penny could make heads or tails out of for what felt like an hour. From the huge words he kept tossing around, she gathered he was explaining how the device worked but it was all Greek to her.

Thankfully, though, he let her steer him back into the living room, so she could at least go through her mail while he talked. She assumed that at some point he'd wind down enough for her to ask some pointed questions about why he was running from people with guns.

That someone might have valid reasons for wanting to kill Sheldon, though, didn't seem as foreign a concept as it once had.

Finally, Penny couldn't take it anymore. She felt flattened by the unending barrage of "neutron flows" and "positronic matrix" and all the other gobbledygook she had no hope of pronouncing.

"Okay, so, what," she interrupted, "these random people—this Joyce or whatever—just walked up to you and said, 'Hey, give us your bomb!'"

"It's not a bomb. And they paid for me to develop it. I just told you that. Really, Penny, keep up."

"So you're making them an interossible—"

" _Interocitor_."

"So why not just hand it over?"

He looked completely shocked by the question. "Because they would use it as a weapon! I just wanted to use their money until I could finish the prototype and get published. I thought they'd be fooled by the mockup I gave them a lot longer than this."

Penny scrubbed her face with her hands and swore. "Oh, my God, Sheldon. That kind of shit only works in the movies. And it doesn't even work then! You can't tell me you haven't seen _Back to the Future_!"

Sheldon harrumphed. "This is a totally different situation. I would _never_ build a nuclear weapon for anyone, let alone terrorists."

"Oh, great, at least you've got _boundaries_."

"Now, a power station, that's a different story. Do you know how much—"

She cut him off with a quick, "Nope! Don't care either. Get back to the Koreans."

" _North_ Koreans." When she rolled her eyes, he responded in kind.

"Joyce Kim is an agent working in the United States to turn vulnerable scientists working on sensitive research projects."

"How'd she get you, then? If you didn't sleep with her."

Sheldon looked away. "I didn't vet the candidates to replace my former roommate well enough."

"Ah, that Lenny guy."

"Indeed. When their initial attempts failed," here his face flushed a dull pink, and Penny made a mental note to try to get to the bottom of _that_ if she ever had the chance, "they undermined my position at the university. Once I was disgraced, Joyce arranged for what I thought was a plum position with an independent agency. But, again, I was blinded by convenience and didn't realize what I'd agreed to until it was too late."

Penny wanted to offer him some kind of comforting words, but what could she say? _I'm sorry_? _Sorry your whole life got ruined_? _Sorry you wound up working for the bad guys_? _Sorry you almost got shot in the head in the middle of a parking lot some random night_?

Sheldon cleared his throat. "I should probably tell you that there's a chance I might also be jumping around in time."

"You _might_ ," she said flatly. Was that why he'd had such a strange, delayed reaction to being shot at?

"It's a distinct possibility."

She waited for him to explain and heaved a sigh when he continued to stare at her.

"Look, I can't believe I'm doing this but you can stay here tonight. I'll take you back to the store, or whatever. We'll talk about it in the morning."

He agreed with reasonably good cheer, then asked which bedroom he would be using.

"Uh, the _living_ room. Don't touch anything. Don't read any more of my mail.  
The couch folds out and there's bed stuff in the closet—"

Sheldon looked concerned. "How clean is it?"

"It's..." Penny pressed her lips together to keep from shrieking. "It's clean. I just washed it. It's fine."

Sure he would protest further, she folded her arms to wait but he seemed satisfied by her assurances. With a nod, she grabbed the bat from its resting place by the front door, tucked her laptop under her arm, and went down the hall to her room.

When she saw the light under the door finally go out and heard the faint squeaks of the pull-out bed as Sheldon settled in, Penny put down the bat and booted up the computer. She typed his name into the search engine and within seconds had page after page of results, detailing everything from his brief tenure at Caltech, before being fired for what some accounts called insubordination and others hinted might have had something to do with his security clearance being revoked, to his numerous awards and degrees. He even had a series of pages dedicated to him on RateMyProfessors, with dozens of comments linking to individual student blog posts about his arrogance and general dickishness.

She scrolled through the image results after confirming that his faculty shot matched both the one she'd seen earlier on her phone and his current appearance now, wincing in sympathy at the seemingly endless array of awkward poses and hideous outfits.

There was no question about it; he was definitely who he claimed to be.

 _So_ , Penny wondered, _what now?_ She climbed into bed, suddenly so exhausted that even her hair hurt. She turned the whole night over in her head, trying to decide what she should do.

But sleep came and went before she could, bringing the morning sun with it. She lolled in bed as long as she could, until she realized that her houseguest had beaten her to the kitchen. Loud bangs and a worrying whir floated down the hallway, followed shortly by the smell of something burning.

Penny jumped into her bathrobe and ran. She pushed Sheldon away from the toaster oven that hadn't worked right since Kurt had "repaired" it and told him to sit quietly until she told him to move again.

He retreated to the living room, where a series of buzzes interspersed with strange near-curse words made a kind of soundtrack to her morning routine. It was almost nice to have someone else in the house again, but she stomped that thought flat before it had time to expand.

Even if she hadn't, though, it would have died just fine on its own. Especially because by the time the coffee and waffles were done, Sheldon had somehow managed to turn himself invisible again.

  


\---

  
"Do you have any cherry popsicles?" the disembodied voice asked as Penny came back into the kitchen after her shower.

"I am seriously not talking to you until you change back." She rubbed her forehead. "I still can't believe this is happening."

"Oh, right. Sorry."

A few minutes later, she knew without turning around that Sheldon was visible once again. Each time he did whatever it was he did with the device that now sported a festive braided cord Penny had unearthed from the junk drawer, there was a very faint humming noise and a smell like someone was burning leaves a mile or so down the road.

When he stepped up next to her, she handed over the box of popsicles. He put the interocitor's cord around his neck before taking it. The bright orange stripes on his shirt were every bit as startling in her kitchen as they had been the night before under the fluorescent lights in the canned soup aisle.

"You didn't tell me there was still an orange one in here!" Sheldon closed the flap of the box and put it back in the freezer before turning his attention to the waxy paper sleeve. "Cherry is the best popsicle flavor, obviously, but orange is a close second. But on a day as hot as today, I think the lime flavor will be more refreshing than the cloying sweetness of the cherry. If it even is real cherry, which it probably is not." He pulled the box out again and peered at the minuscule ingredients list.

Despite the internet search she'd run the night before, Penny was still having a really hard time believing was that he was some kind of doctor and not an overgrown child who'd escaped from a mental hospital. Well, if it hadn't been for the scathing blog posts _and_ the repeated proof that he had some kind of invisibility device.

And the bullet hole in the backseat of her car, of course.

All the same, he was rapidly approaching the point when he wore down her very last nerve.

"Look, Sheldon. Okay, it's not like I want you to get... Are you sure you really don't have anywhere else to go?"

It was probably the seventeenth time she'd asked him to explain what the fuck was going on, again, only not always in so many words, but he'd stopped getting pissy about it somewhere around the time she nearly punched him in the throat and threatened to call CNN.

"Until I determine whether the man who shot at your car in the parking lot is after me, the device, or some combination thereof, I don't know who to trust. As a complete stranger who is incapable of understanding the technology or its ramifications, you are by far the safest choice."

Penny let the insult roll right off; it was far from the first time he'd called her stupid in the last twenty hours or so. Anyway, it wasn't like it wasn't true in this case. Frankly, the less she knew about the thing around his neck, the better off she figured she'd be.

He trailed along behind her while she hauled her laptop out onto the deck. When she dropped into a chaise, he gingerly lowered himself to its twin and took delicate bites of his popsicle. His elbows and knees stuck out at awkward angles as he tried to find a way to sit comfortably on the metal and canvas chair that was at least a foot too short for his frame.

The device around his neck clunked against the arm of the chair. He made a noise like a startled kitten and held it still against his chest.

While she waited for her computer to boot up so they could check the news—she still hadn't replaced the TV Kurt had taken when he moved out—a new question occurred to her. Why the hell hadn't she thought about this before? She tried to keep the panic out of her voice. _He would have said something, right?_ "You're sure they can't track you when you use that thing?"

Sheldon finished sucking the last bits of his popsicle off the stick, then laid it on the canvas to the left of his knee.

"No," he said. "I'm not."

Penny's chest hollowed out.

Her first instinct was to call the police. They could serve and protect their asses right over to her house and either get Sheldon to file charges against Joyce Kim and whoever else was helping her force him to work on the interocitor, or haul him away. At that point, she almost didn't really care which.

But Sheldon shot that idea down with one elegantly timed and nearly unconcerned, "I'm sure they got your license plate last night."

While she ran to the bathroom and crouched over the toilet, her stomach churning with fear and bile, he stood in the hall outside and explained his plan to her through the door.

"Then we go to my apartment so I can pick up my notes and equipment," he said. "As soon as I can stabilize the polarity, then the interocitor will be safe to take to—"

The rest of his plan was drowned in the flush of the toilet. As the tank refilled, Penny sagged against the wall and wondered how long he would keep talking if she didn't respond. Would he give up eventually? Could she outwait him if she just stayed here forever?

"Penny?" he called, as if she might have forgotten he was outside. "Penny?"

When he started knocking, she stood and threw the door open. "You can't give it to the North Koreans."

She had half an argument ready to go if he tried to fight her on it, hoping that all the years of fighting with Kurt would somehow give her a leg up. There was no one on Earth more stubborn than Kurt, after all. If she could talk him into counseling, once upon a time, talking Sheldon into not committing treason should be no big deal.

But he didn't fight her.

"No, I can't," he agreed. "For one thing, they'd never publicly recognize my contribution, and then how could I win the Nobel?"

 _Wow_. That was not at all where Penny had envisioned the conversation going, but she wasn't going to quibble.

On the drive into Pasadena, Sheldon only spoke to tell her when to turn. When Penny tried to engage him in small talk, he answered only in monosyllables or not at all. He sat completely still, as well, only his head moving to take quick peeks in the mirror to see if anyone was following them.

When they neared the turn for Los Robles, Sheldon suddenly tensed. His hands unfolded and he gripped his thighs with fingertips gone white from the pressure.

"Go left, go left!" he hissed. When she swerved into the center lane, he slid down in his seat until his head and knees were nearly level.

"What is it? What's going on? Was there somebody behind us?"

She tried to get a quick look in her rearview mirror, but then a gap opened in the oncoming traffic and she had to turn or miss the chance.

"There's a roadblock set up ahead," he said. "Does this radio work?"

He pushed the button to turn it on without waiting for her answer, then spun quickly through the dial until he found the local NPR station. The calm, even voice from the speakers reminded Penny that she had left her laptop sitting out on the deck. She hadn't even had a chance to look at the CNN page she'd pulled up before bolting for the bathroom.

After a brief musical cue, the announcer asked a remote reporter for an update.

"Yeah, hi, Maria. I'm on the scene in Pasadena. It's— You just heard the statement from the FBI agent in charge down here. The man who's been abducted is a physician—sorry, a _physicist_ , formerly on a research fellowship at Caltech. His name is Sheldon Lee Cooper and he apparently lived in the building where the explosion occurred earlier this morning."

"Can you see the building from where you are?" Maria asked.

"Ah, not really, just the corner, the very corner of it. There's a thick plume of smoke rising into the air but they're keeping us pretty far back from—Wait, someone's just coming around with some flyers.... Yeah, they're giving us the info on that suspect they named earlier, the woman they think abducted Dr Cooper."

"That would be Penelope Wade, right, Jonah?"

"That's right. Uh, Penny Wade, estranged wife of NFL—"

The reporter's voice cut off in mid-sentence as Sheldon snapped the radio off again.

This, Penny decided, was definitely shock. She could hardly feel her own hands. They knew she was with Sheldon. They knew she was helping him. And they were doing it again, just like they'd done to him. They were going to ruin her life, plaster her face and name all over the country just to flush him out.

They'd erased her last chance for getting away from him, too. There was no way she'd be able to go to the authorities now. If she so much as showed her face, they'd lock her up so fast she might never see daylight again.

Sheldon cleared his throat. "I'm sorry."

It sounded just as empty from his mouth as it had tasted in hers.


	2. Chapter 2

****

II

For a few minutes every morning—between the shower that snapped her out of a sleep-fogged daze and stepping out of the bathroom fully dressed for the day—Penny got to look in the mirror and not be surprised by the eyes that looked back. But then she'd have to take that last step of her morning routine and pop in the colored contacts that finished her transformation from Starving Actress (On the Run) to Boring Entry-Level Office Drone (Faking It, and Badly).

This week it was blue eyes. Mousy brown hair. Maybe a little too much time between waxings, if the state of her eyebrows and upper lip were anything to go by.

 _Bang, bang, bang_ went the knuckles on the door, right on time. Penny stuffed the makeup back in the medicine cabinet and slammed the mirrored door closed before it could all cascade back out into the sink.

"Are you ready to go? You need to leave in precisely four minutes in order to catch the bus and get to work by the start of your workday. If you're late again, you could get fired."

"Are you visible yet?" Penny called back. She already knew the answer. It had been almost two weeks since she last heard that hum. Since she felt it raise the hairs on the back of her neck and smelled autumn in the middle of spring.

They had found ways around it, mostly, but Penny missed being able to look him in the eye. To watch the way his face changed when she riled him up, or the slight flush that rose up through his neck and face when she was waiting outside the bathroom for her turn in the mornings. Invisible, it was almost impossible for her to forget for a few hours what a terrible idea it was to get involved with the crazy man who'd ruined her life. The reminder was always right there, in the clothes that seemed to hang on thin air.

She wondered if it would help to make some sort of ultimatum, if reminding him of all the ways _visible_ Sheldon could be useful to her would be enough to kick his brain in gear to fix whatever had fritzed out inside the device.

Of course, she didn't even know where to start with that one.

"Three minutes, thirty seconds," he said instead of answering. The door creaked open an inch or two, his yellow-gloved fingers coming around the edge like some kind of horror movie villain.

Or Brad Pitt-in- _Fight Club_ , her mind unhelpfully supplied. Wrenching the door open, a panting, half-dressed Penny in the room behind him, Sheldon barking out monosyllabic answers to annoying questions....

Penny swept her hair up in a ponytail, trying to cool down the sudden rush of heat that flooded through her.

She really needed to get laid.

"I know, I know," Penny muttered toward the door. She was already dressed in her now-standard work outfit. Today it was a horrible pencil skirt that sagged at the waist and a thin, frilly blouse that had seen better days. There were tiny squirrels capering all across the fabric, their bushy tails the same drab color as the skirt. It was almost enough to make her miss the white, yellow, and denim nightmare they made her wear at the diner.

She pushed on the bathroom door, just a tiny _whoosh_ to shake Sheldon's hand loose and send him stumbling back a few inches to let her pass. He sometimes had a real problem with personal space when he was invisible, as if not being able to see the dimensions of his own body made him blind to hers.

One of the dishwashing gloves thrust a slip of paper at her face. The baggy sweatshirt sleeve above it fell back an inch or two, revealing the seemingly empty air where his pale freckled forearm should have been.

"I need you to bring these things when you come home," Sheldon demanded. "I've also left a second copy in your purse so you can't _forget the list_ like last time."

Or he just barged into her personal space all the time because he was an asshole.

She scanned the paper. The only word she recognized was _solder_. Everything else was a tangle of letters that looked like they didn't even belong in the same paragraph, let alone word.

"Where am I supposed to get all this junk?"

"It's not junk. It's equipment I need to continue my work."

"Looks like junk to me," she muttered.

"Any reasonably well-stocked hardware store, chemical supply company, or college laboratory stores should have all of these items."

"Great," she said, with about as much enthusiasm as the situation warranted. "And I'm supposed to pay for all of this, how? You spent everything but the rent on those tiny screwdrivers."

She didn't bother to look at him. Being able to see inside the knitted hat he insisted on wearing _while_ he was invisible was still creepy as hell, even after seeing it as often as she had. It was like looking at the pictures in her high school science book, where you could see all the different organs and veins and bones.

Her purse was on top of the boxy old TV where she'd left it after dinner the night before. Inside, she knew without looking, was seventeen dollars and forty-three cents. That was all the money she had left. It had to last until the end of the week when she'd get another envelope of cash at work and spend the bus ride home wondering how on earth she'd make it stretch another two weeks.

Maybe it was time to throw in the towel. Believing that her life was in just as much danger, she'd promised Sheldon that she wouldn't turn him in. But with every week that passed without so much as a hint that anyone was looking for them, the promise seemed more and more like a mistake.

They were holing up in a pay-by-the-week apartment building for the time being—their second in as many months—a tiny one-bedroom place near the freeway, with a mildewed bathroom, stained carpets, and a couch that practically started screaming any time anyone sat on it. Or if, god forbid, someone tried to sleep on it, like she did every single night.

There was at least one upside to being on the run with Sheldon, though. After his initial panic attack at the state of the rooms, he'd flung himself into cleaning with all the stubborn determination of her dad working on his latest classic car restoration. The bathroom was cleaner than it probably had been since the place was built, and Penny was sure there wasn't a cockroach within half a mile that would even think about getting near Sheldon and his face masks and the seemingly endless supply of foggers and sprays.

She was so busy checking to make sure she had everything she needed for the day that she didn't realize Sheldon had answered her question until his hand waved in front of her face.

"What?"

"I said, use this."

He wasn't just waving to get her attention, apparently. In his gloved hand, he clutched a huge wad of bills. Tens and fives, mostly, with quite a few twenties peeking out from the middle of the bundle.

Penny grabbed for it. Sheldon surrendered the money so easily she almost fell over when she pulled her arm back, expecting at least a little resistance.

"You've had this the whole time?" She added it up quickly, stopping only when she hit three-hundred and there was still almost a quarter of the bundle left to go. All thought of getting to work on time had fled.

"Oh. No." He stopped for a second like he really had to think about it. "I... That is, I found it in my— Well—"

"I had to beg for an under-the-table job in the slimiest office in the world so we could eat something other than expired Fiber-Os and you've had this the whole time? You got this from your apartment, didn't you?"

Her blood pressure had spiked so high there were tiny black dots swimming on the edges of her vision. "I am _wearing_ a _squirrel blouse_."

Why that was the most outrageous of all the indignities she'd suffered in the past three months, Penny didn't know. But at that particular moment, it sure felt like it. She wanted to rip off the horrible rayon blouse and shove every single stupid, bushy tail so far up his ass, he would be coughing up hairballs for a week.

 _She_ had to find a job so he could spend every waking moment working on his stupid interocitor so they could go home. _She_ had to abandon her car in a scary-looking part of town so they wouldn't be tailed—the car that had a giant _empty space_ where its windshield should have been and a perfectly round _bullet hole_ in the backseat. She abandoned her house, her job, her friends, her family....

In return, all he had given up was—well, okay, maybe not having any control over how and when he could actually see his own hand in front of his face wasn't exactly the better half of their twisted little deal.

Sheldon's gloves fluttered at his sides for a second. He didn't have to be visible for Penny to be sure his entire face was one giant, terrified grimace.

"Maybe I was saving the money for emergencies only?" he offered.

It wasn't often that Sheldon sounded apologetic, and this didn't even come close. She could have stood there all day arguing but she was out of time: the alarm on his watch was beeping like crazy. In less than a minute, the bus would pull away from the stop on the corner. If she was lucky, the driver would wait if he saw her running.

But Penny hadn't been lucky for a long time.

 

\---

 

The office was seven bus stops away. On a normal day, it would take her maybe half an hour to get there. But nothing was ever normal anymore. Instead, she had to change buses twice, doubling back on her own trail to shake anybody who might be following. Not that she thought anyone would be, but Sheldon always seemed to know when she was lying or trying to hide something. He couldn't tell so much as a fib to save his life, but he always knew when she was even thinking about stretching the truth.

So, she took a different circuitous route every morning—all timed practically down to the second. And over an hour after she raced to catch it that morning, the bus pulled up to her stop in front of the storefront that had been converted to office space.

Smack in the middle of a run-down shopping center, with the greasy smell of fried food hanging over everything, it was the cubicle-dwellers' version of the shitty apartment building she lived in. Mismatched modular dividers sectioned the space into a warren of cramped, crooked pens, with as little regard for traffic flow as interior design. The fluorescent lights were peppered with bug carcasses, and the sound of miserable cold-call scripts buzzed around the office from morning to night.

Penny sat at the reception desk, a linoleum-covered monstrosity that squatted between the drafty front doors and the always-cranking copier that last saw a good day sometime in 1993. The phone barely rang, and when it did, it was almost always a heavily accented caller who asked for Mr Gluggs. Or ear plugs. Or something. No matter how many times Penny asked the caller to repeat the request, the line went dead before she got any more useful information.

The morning passed excruciatingly slowly, as always. It was as if time couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the dejected little building and its equally wretched occupants.

Penny dozed at the desk, chin propped on one hand until her elbow ached or the shrill ring of the phone startled her awake. There was an ache deep in the muscles where her neck and shoulder met that she couldn't shake no matter how she stretched or kneaded. It was from sleeping on the springy couch, frozen in the same position all night so she could sleep in relative quiet.

If she'd gone on the lam with anybody else in the entire world, anybody at all, there was no way she'd be spending every night on the couch. Not when there was a perfectly good, quiet, beautiful, gorgeous bedroom just steps away. The carpet was worn. The window that wouldn't open overlooked a sliver of the weed-strewn lot behind the building, complete with rusted, abandoned railroad tracks and forgotten shopping carts. The bed was narrow and cramped, with a mattress hardly thicker than her forearm. But compared to the threadbare couch it looked like a cloud drifted down from heaven. She daydreamed about it, sometimes.

Okay, a lot. In her head, she pitched dozens of fits bigger than any Sheldon had thrown since the minute he came to on her bedroom floor. In her head, she won and won and won. She claimed the bed. The whole room. She kicked him out and it was all hers, every moth-eaten inch of it. No screaming springs or shuddering support bars or feet stomping past the front door all night long.

Once, late at night, she even decided to try to seduce her way into the bed. She wondered, now, in the dusty light of day, miles away from the irritation of living with Sheldon, if she could have just asked nicely. But then, after heavy footsteps barreled up and down the hall for hours, the various squeaks and groans and shuddering pipes and horn blasts from the freeway piled up on her nerves like lead bricks until she had ripped the pillow off of her head. A few adjustments to the tank top and shorts she wore to bed, and she was tapping on the bedroom door before she could think twice.

It wasn't like Sheldon was all that terrible, face-wise. And as far as she could tell from the past few months, he wasn't a pervert or a creep. Weird, yes, but nothing so strange she couldn't put up with it. At least he wasn't sleeping with her friends and her agent in her own bed.

Well, couch.

She could share a bed with _Sheldon_ , she decided. No problem. She'd rather it be _just_ sharing the bed, but if it came down to needing to convince him some other way, well, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

It might even be fun, she'd thought. It had been such a long time that it probably wouldn't take much to get her going. And she couldn't imagine that someone who paid as much attention to detail as Sheldon did would be a complete washout, in any case.

But when she opened the bedroom door, she found Sheldon sitting cross-legged on the bed, with the dull metal pieces of the interocitor spread all around him and a pile of discarded wires on his knee. Just the thought of how long it would take him to pack it all away before he'd consent to talk to her—let alone agreeing to let her near the bed—was so exhausting, she turned around and shut the door behind her without saying a word.

Well, and then the next day he turned himself invisible again and hadn't been able to switch back since. Penny might almost be desperate enough to throw herself at the human equivalent of Big Bird, but trying to seduce an invisible man was taking it about six steps too far.

Dara Seng swept aside the magazines and nail polish that littered the reception desk to hoist herself up next to Penny's phone. Barely five feet tall and nearly as round, with a frizzy perm that somehow embodied her entire personality, her feet swung freely more than a foot off the ground.

With her tendency to butt into everyone's business and a reluctance to sit at her desk for more than five minutes when the boss was locked in his windowless office, Dara was the closest thing to a friend Penny had in the place.

"You going to lunch, Patty?" Dara asked. "I gotta get out of here."

"Nope. Errands." Penny waved the note from Sheldon.

"Girl, you need to tell that lazy ass he can get his own...." Dara peered at the slip of paper. "Whatever the hell that is. What's he need all that for?"

Penny shrugged. Dara crossed her arms.

"He's not building a bomb, is he?"

"No!" At least, he'd _said_ he wasn't.

"Well, if he is, you tell him I know just where he can stick it."

Dara had elected herself the mother hen of the office, always pressing for updates on everyone's lives outside of work. She didn't like the sound of Sheldon much, she'd told Penny repeatedly. She just didn't trust him, which wasn't helped at all by Penny's reluctance to talk about him. But the months of hiding had trained her to play her cards as close to the vest as possible.

"We're just walking over to the Red Bell for that nasty carrot soup," Dara went on. "Or whatever it is Bilal says he can eat this week. I'll bring you back a bowl."

"Oh, thanks, sweetie, but you don't have to do that."

"You sure? Sometimes I wonder if you eat at all."

In another life, Penny would have taken that for a compliment. But her breakfast that morning had been plain ramen noodles and her lunch was going to be more of the same. The noodles were cheaper to buy in bulk from the market up the street from their building, but they didn't come with the seasoning packets either. It was hard to believe how much she missed that little sodium bomb.

She felt guilty accepting anything from Dara, though. With two babies at home and a matching number of full-time jobs to try to make ends meet, it was all she could do to keep a roof over their heads some months. Penny at least still had the option of... Well, of doing _something_ , though she hadn't figured out what yet.

"I’m good," Penny said, with as sunny a smile as she could muster. She nudged her purse with one foot. "Brought mine from home again."

Dara nodded then jumped down off the desk. She stretched her back with a heavy grunt and dropped her car keys into Penny's lap.

"I can't take—"

"All that shit on the bus," Dara finished for her. She crossed her arms again and lowered her chin, ready for a fight.

Penny looked at the list again. Even if she was lucky enough to find everything at the first place she went, it was going to be a hassle and a half to haul everything back to the office. Then she'd still have to drag it all back home, through however many route changes she thought she could get away with without Sheldon noticing she was home earlier than usual.

"Fine, okay. Thank you, Dara, really. I'll pay you back for the gas, I promise."

"You could always pay it off with babysitting."

Penny fought to keep a straight face until Dara had disappeared into the maze of cubicles again.

Dara's kids sounded like nightmares at their best and not many of her stories from home showed them at their best. But Penny wouldn't have minded much, to be honest. She had missed watching her niece and nephews grow up when she followed Kurt to California. By this point in her life, she had always thought she would be a mom already, with a couple of sweet-smelling babies with her hair and Kurt's eyes. But like so many of her dreams, that one had been swept aside and replaced with the reality of just trying to get through the day.

She found a phone book wedged at the back of a filing cabinet and started calling hardware stores in the area, avoiding the big names like Sheldon had warned her the last time she went on a supply run for him.

"Just because you changed your hair color doesn't mean they won't spot you," he'd said. For the next ten minutes he droned on and on about the capabilities of facial recognition until she was tempted to ask if all of it would be on his final exam. But she'd been on the receiving end of his "I'm too smart to waste on teaching" lecture way too often.

Six calls later, Penny finally found a store with a clerk willing to check their inventory against her list. They carried almost two-thirds of what she needed, so she carefully copied down the directions and told him she’d be by on her lunch break.

 

\---

 

Jack's Fix-it was a small storefront just a block off the main street downtown. The windows in front were covered with painted plywood taller than Penny, with a mural showing half a dozen home improvement projects in various stages. Inside, the aisles were narrow and dark but the floor was clean and bright. Cheery music played from a pair of speakers on a homemade stand suspended from the ceiling over the single register.

Just inside the front doors, a short man in a brown canvas coat over a lime-green hooded sweatshirt was browsing through a display of gardening equipment. He pushed up his glasses and smiled at her, a crease forming between his brows. She gave him the barest twitch of her lips upward in return. He was kind of cute, if a little nerdy-looking and definitely not dressed for the heat, and she might not have minded striking up a conversation under normal circumstances.

"So you're the girl who called earlier," someone said from behind her. She turned to find a skinny old black man leaning over the register. Dressed in brown pants, a short-sleeved dress shirt, and a knitted vest, he was eighty if he was a day. The tag drooping from the thin fabric of his shirt pocket identified him as the Jack of the sign outside. MR FIX-IT HIMSELF, it said in smaller print at the bottom.

Thinning white hair clung stubbornly to the sides of his head but the top was a broad expanse of dark skin. Thick-framed glasses hung from a cord around his neck. To his left, a polished wooden cane hung from the top of the counter by its handle. His face wrinkled even more when he grinned at her, huge false teeth gleaming in the light from the front windows from behind his thick white moustache.

"That's me!" Penny said. She couldn't help but smile back. "If you can just tell me where to find—"

He waved off her words. "No, no, we got it all here for you."

He thumped the side of the cardboard box next to him on the counter. It was nearly overflowing with all kinds of things Penny wouldn't have been able to identify with a gun to her head, but right on top was a spool of soldering compound. The same kind she'd used the summer she and her dad had replaced the water heater, while Wyatt Junior was getting a _second_ second chance at Boys Town.

While he rang up her purchases, the man kept up a running commentary about this or that item, how he thought they carried it in this length but really only had it in this other length. Penny's eyes started to glaze over by about the third explanation but she kept the smile plastered on. It was really sweet of him (and whoever else worked with him, because surely he couldn't have gathered everything himself) to have everything ready when she arrived.

"Now, Charlie said—that's my son, Charlie—he said there's no way we'd have any of them little diodes you asked for. 'When did we ever carry _diodes_?' he said." Jack paused to bark out a laugh. "I told him, 'Charlie, don't you remember that time we...'"

Penny snuck a look over her shoulder. The guy browsing the gardening equipment had moved only a few feet from where he'd been standing when she came in. She didn't know how a rack of shovels could hold anyone's attention for longer than it took to just grab one. Suspicion started to crawl up her spine.

As if reacting to her unease, the guy suddenly patted his pockets and turned away to walk deeper into the store like he'd dropped or forgotten something. Penny let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and turned back to Jack, who was chortling away at his own story.

He wiped at the tears of laughter that leaked from the corners of his eyes with a worn flannel handkerchief, and then turned the register's display to show Penny her total.

"Now that's with the discount, you understand," he said with a wink. "Pretty ladies buying all this handyman stuff always get a discount."

If he'd been a couple dozen decades younger, Penny could have kissed him. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt like anyone found her pretty, or even memorable. Too much time staying to the shadows, until she'd started to feel like one herself.

After counting her change back into her open palm, Jack pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and put on his glasses.

"Now, the rest of that stuff you needed. While Charlie was putting your box together, I went ahead and called around for you. Figured you wouldn't want to be driving all over town on such a nice, sunny day!"

He handed over the paper, which was a map that would take her down near the local community college campus. Marked with a bold X at the end of the traced route was a laboratory supply company.

"I know the guy who owns it, so you just tell 'em Jack sent you and they'll fix you right up. Should be holding everything for you at the front just like we did."

"I don't even know what to say," Penny gushed. "Thank you so much! This is so sweet of you."

He looked at her over the frame of his glasses and winked. "Too much more flirting like that, miss, and we're going to have to send you back in time to look me up when I'm young and handsome."

Penny laughed, hoping he wouldn't see the way she had flinched. From behind her, there was a bang as something heavy hit the floor. When she looked, she saw that the man in the canvas jacket had dropped a large box of nails.

Jack didn't appear to notice the disruption, or he was so used to such noises that they simply didn't register.

"Just doing what I do," he said when she tried to thank him again. "Now, go on, get out of here. Traffic'll be pretty heavy in that part of town."

He was right. After idling more than ten cars back from a stoplight through three complete cycles, Penny abandoned her plan of circling around using side streets and just followed the route Jack had drawn for her.

Tucked away as it was in an industrial park behind a big box retailer, Penny never would have found the laboratory supply company on her own. There were a handful of cars parked outside, and a small group of dreadlocked white kids standing in a loose circle near a dumpster. They kicked something back and forth between them, groans and jeers erupting every time someone missed.

She was hit with a blast of freezing air conditioning when she pushed through the door. An electronic chime wheezed overhead like no one had changed its batteries in a dozen years. The building was long and squat, but the office Penny had stepped into was barely larger than her apartment's bathroom. A dusty plastic plant sat in a puddle of sunlight from the front door and a low desk ran the length of the back wall. Behind it was a taller counter with sliding glass windows, like an old-fashioned drug store pharmacy. And beyond that, she could see a group of men in dark pants and shirts wrapping items in bubble wrap and loading cardboard boxes onto pallets.

Sitting behind the desk, a middle-aged Indian with a thick line of vermilion painted down her part set down the well-worn copy of _Message in a Bottle_ she was reading.

"Can I help you?" she asked, already looking bored by the answer Penny had yet to give.

"Uh, you're holding some stuff for me? My name's Pe- Uh, I mean, Jack called?"

The woman turned away and pulled a thick plastic shopping bag from under the counter. It dropped next to the book with a clank.

"It's $42.78."

Penny started to open the bag to check inside. "Is this everything?"

"Uh-huh. $42.78." Her right hand never let go of the book, one finger holding her place like a bookmark.

When Penny pulled what was left of the money out of her pocket, coins spilled out all over the floor. Her face flushed hot and red and she bent down to scoop them off the thin carpet with a muttered apology.

"Okay, okay," the woman said with a heavy sigh, "just leave it. I'll get it. You give me $42 and just go."

"But it's only—"

"Just go," the woman repeated. She shooed her away with the book. "Take your stuff and go."

Penny was back out in the parking lot with the heavy bag before she was quite sure what had happened. As the door swung closed, she heard the woman rattling off something in a language she didn't recognize.

"O _kay_ ," Penny breathed. A cheer went up from the group at the dumpster.

The car was boiling hot again by the time she wrestled the door open—maybe she should have been kinder to her old car, she thought. It seemed that there wasn't a lock in the world that would open when she wanted it to. The fan whirred as she backed out of the space and headed for the lot's exit, but only a trickle of cool air came trickling out of the vents. Penny cranked down the driver's side window and steered with her knees until she could twist her hair up off her neck. Tucking it into a loose knot, she turned to look over her shoulder to make sure none of Sheldon's junk had disappeared out of the back seat.

How she would even notice anything missing amidst the tangle of wires and tools, she didn't know.

When she faced forward again, there was a small tan car turning into the lot. Heading straight for her.

"Shit!"

Jerking the wheel to the right, she careened around the oncoming vehicle. The other car passed within inches of her bumper, as if he too hadn't been paying attention. Penny caught only a quick glance at his face, pale and pinched behind heavy glasses, and a blur of colors.

Brown and bright green.

She was already stomping on the accelerator before she realized what connection her brain had made. The guy at the hardware store, the one who'd dropped the box of nails when Jack made his joke about time travel.

Penny swore again, as long and loud and creatively as anything she'd ever heard coming out of her mom's kitchen on Thanksgiving morning. At the main street she turned left through the first gap that opened up, slid in between two heavy sedans jockeying for position, then cut off a slow-moving SUV and snaked through traffic until she reached an open alley.

Keeping one eye on her rearview mirrors, she twisted through the roads around the college campus, doubling and tripling back over her trail until her heartbeat slowed. She pulled into a narrow driveway between two dormitories, found an open parking space, and cut the engine. After a quick check to make sure no one had followed her in, she dropped her head to the steering wheel and exhaled until it felt like there was no air left in her lungs.

"So fucking _stupid_ ," she scolded herself. "It probably wasn't even the same guy."

The longer she sat and listened to the ticking of the engine as it cooled, the more convinced she was that her mind was trying to make connections where there weren't any. She was jumping at shadows, letting Sheldon's paranoia infect her, even when he was miles away.

Frankly, it was a wonder it had taken this long. Hopefully, the load of equipment cluttering up the backseat would be just what Sheldon needed to fix the interocitor once and for all. She wanted to go home, where everything might not be the greatest, but at least it was familiar. And all hers.

Feeling foolish—and guilty for how long she'd been away from the office—she started the car and took the quickest, most direct route back to the apartment.

 

\---

 

The elevator was working, for a change, so it only took one trip to get all of Sheldon's supplies up to the apartment. Penny unlocked the door and pushed the box in with her foot, dropping the bag on top once everything was inside and out of the way.

"It's just me," she called. "I think I got everything."

The bedroom door was closed and she didn't hear anything from inside.

Walking further into the apartment, she felt a hint of her earlier paranoia rear its head.

"Are you in there?"

There was a whisper of noise, like he was sliding out of bed or opening the closet door.

Penny dropped Dara's keys on the counter in the kitchenette and moved closer to the door. A quick survey of the rest of the room showed that he hadn't moved any of her things: shirts piled on the arm of the couch, a pile of magazines slowly inching its way under the rickety coffee table, the stack of empty soda cans she kept meaning to drop in the recycling bin in the parking lot. That meant he definitely hadn't been out of the bedroom all day; she usually came home from work to find her stuff neatly folded and arranged in straight lines.

"Sheldon? Everything okay? I need to get back to work but if you're—"

"I'm fine!" he called finally. There was another muted whoosh, then footsteps. The door cracked open an inch or so. Inside all was dark, like he had drawn the curtains tight against the light of day. "Everything's fine. Don't forget to zig-zag."

Something dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.

"What the hell was that?"

Penny was just inches away from shoving the door open when it suddenly swung inward and she saw Sheldon step out into the living room.

She _saw_ him step out into the living room.

She blinked a couple of times, wondering if maybe she'd fallen asleep at the reception desk and dreamed this whole weird lunch break. But he was still there when she looked again, pulling the door closed behind him. He was wearing a pair of shirts she didn't recognize, a bright, long-sleeved red shirt under a blue tee with a character she couldn't remember seeing before. She thought his hair might be shorter than she remembered. He definitely looked more tired, with fine lines radiating from his eyes that hadn't been there before. But it had been so long since he'd worn anything in her presence that wasn't the sweatsuit and hat that he covered him almost head to toe, he could have looking like just about anything and it would seem strange to her.

"Wait, what... How? When—"

"Visible again, obviously; calibrated the infraspectrometer; this morning."

Penny sputtered for a second, and then realized that she was brushing her fingers against the skin of his exposed forearm. She pulled her hand away like he was made of penicillin and she was allergic.

Sheldon didn't seem to notice. Still holding the door handle, he continued, "Also: me; here; it was time, to answer the rest of your questions."

She narrowed her eyes. "Why'd I have to get all that junk for you then?"

"Oh!" he said, as if he hadn't heard her announce it when she arrived. "Well, the adjustments I made to the infraspectrometer are only temporary. I still need to re-configure the differential flux and—"

"Whatever, I don't care. Are you visible for good now?"

He opened his mouth but Penny heard another thud from the other side of the door, followed by a high-pitched whine that drowned out his words.

When his eyes went wide, she tried to get past him into the bedroom to see what was happening. The door opened just a few inches before he wrestled the handle back out of her grip and pulled it closed again.

Penny thumped him in the chest. "What's in there? What are you doing in there? Let me—"

"No, it's—"

"Get out of my—"

"Penny, no—"

She gave him one last desperate shove but Sheldon latched onto her shoulder and pulled her with him when he lurched out of the way. He was stronger than he looked. She couldn't pull herself out of his grip.

"What are you _do_ —"

The rest of her question was lost in the press of his lips against hers. She was so startled she forgot to keep fighting and he pressed the advantage, stepping them back further from the door and wrapping one hand around her elbow. His fingers slipped under the thin sleeve to touch the skin of her upper arm.

She had been on the run with Sheldon for a little more than three months. Before that, aside from a few weekends she would rather forget, she hadn't been held by anyone since the morning her marriage fell apart. The pressure of his fingertips on her arm and the memory of his skin under hers sent goosebumps rippling outward. She forgot where they were, forgot _who_ they were, and pushed herself forward until their bodies met from hip to chest. Gripping the back of his head, she kissed Sheldon back, turning his soft, closed-mouth peck into something straight out of one of the dreams she would never admit to having about him.

Sheldon was the first to pull away. He stepped back and dropped his arms to his sides, looking flushed and even a bit confused.

"I shouldn't have..." he started to say, but Penny rushed to cut him off before he said anything either of them might regret.

"No! It's... I have to go. Just, um, okay. It's fine! Dara's car, and I need to... Go. Right, I'm going!" She stumbled a little over her own feet as she backed away across the room. Scooping the keys off the counter, she lunged for the door and pulled in vain for a few seconds before remembering to disengage the deadbolt.

"Okay, bye!" she called over her shoulder as she rushed out into the hallway, barely managing to avoid bowling over a little girl pulling a toy dog on a string.

She was halfway to the elevator before she heard the apartment door snick shut.


	3. Chapter 3

**  
**

**III**

 **  
**

The apartment was dark when Penny got home from work that night. Still feeling guilty about not taking the proper precautions that afternoon, she had taken an extra-twisty route home. After four bus changes and a half-mile hike uphill, she was ready for nothing more than to strip down to her underwear and drink beer on the couch while Kardashians shopped their sizeable asses off or sarcastic judges yelled at idiots.

The only light in the apartment spilled from under the closed bedroom door and a thick odor of burning leaves hung in the air. She turned the thermostat down far enough to trigger the air conditioning—the one and only luxury in the place—and switched on the bathroom fan to get the air moving through the small room.

There was a muted whirring noise coming from the closed door when she passed by, so she tried the knob and found it was locked. She knocked and called out, "Everything okay in there?"

In her head, she added, _And can we pretend this afternoon never happened?_

"I'm fine!" Sheldon answered.

With a shrug, she turned away and heard him say it again: "I'm fine!"

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," she called back.

There was a faint scuffling noise, then Sheldon's voice, much closer this time. "I should be done in another hour or so."

That was new. Usually when he shut himself away to work on the interocitor, she practically had to drag him out by his hair. Or gloves, depending on his visibility. She hoped it was because she was later than normal and not because—

She cut off that train of thought before it could even think about leaving the station.

By the time she'd flipped through all the channels they got, she'd heard the buzz go another two or three times. But the combination of the fan and the air conditioner was making a noticeable difference in the air quality, so that she hardly even noticed whether the smell was still lingering.

When her stomach growled, Penny suddenly remembered that she still had almost twenty-five dollars left over from the errands she'd run. All she could think about was pizza. A big, greasy, gooey pizza with enough cheese and pepperoni and sausage to clog even Sheldon's arteries. Garlic sauce, and cheesy breadsticks, and another cold, cold beer from her dwindling stockpile.

"I'm getting pizza!" she yelled toward the bedroom. "And I'm getting anchovies!"

His protest was instantaneous and heated. For a moment, she was frozen on the couch, thinking he would come storming out to assert his non-anchovy rights while she was still sitting there in her underwear. But he shut up quickly when she shouted, "Them's the breaks, sweetie! You were holding out on me."

As the next episode of Judge Gunn ended, Penny reluctantly pulled her office clothes back on. Sheldon had taken a whirl at cleaning up the living room after she left him at lunchtime, after all, and she didn't know where to start looking for her favorite pair of sweats. Her wardrobe was tiny and made up entirely of what the closest Goodwill had had in her size during their weekday two-items-for-fifty-cents sales, so favorite was a relative term. But the sweats were just the right combination of baggy and unripped to vault them into first place.

From the bedroom came a loud pop, then a low hum that raised the hair on her arms. A quick burst of fresh air made her wonder if Sheldon had finally built something to crack the window open, something no amount of brute force had managed in the past.

"Did you fix it?" she called.

There was a knock on the front door before he answered. She grabbed the cash and practically ran across the room.

"Oh, thank God you're here," Penny said as she opened the door.

A short Asian woman about her own age stood at the threshold, holding a soft-sided insulated carrier that was almost as big as she was. Her face was creased in a frown that looked to be as much a fixture on her face as her nose. She flipped her long dark hair back over her shoulder, pushed up her glasses, and punched Penny square in the gut.

All the air in her lungs and what felt like half the acid in her stomach fled in one explosive breath as she doubled over, pain radiating out through her body. The delivery bag, with the cardboard pizza box nestled snugly inside, smashed into her face as the woman pushed her back into the apartment and kicked the door closed.

Penny hit the floor on all fours, trying to suck in a breath that didn't make her want to vomit all over the floor. Her brain felt scrambled by the second hit, but she was dimly aware that the other woman had her by the hair and was dragging her deeper into the apartment.

 _Joyce Kim_ , thought some part of her that was still capable of remembering. The name kept repeating in her head in a loop, as if it were so important she couldn't let go of it again. Was she supposed to do something with it? _Joyce Kim Joyce Kim Joyce Kim_

"Shut up," Joyce snarled. Penny's jaw snapped shut, catching the side of her tongue between teeth that were suddenly too sharp and heavy and cutting off the high-pitched whimpering she hadn't realized she'd been emitting.

"Sheldon, I know you're in here!" Joyce shouted, her voice lightly accented and almost familiar. "Leonard told me where to find you! You aren't going to get away from me again."

Penny managed to wrap her hands around the fist tangled in her hair and pulled as hard as she could, digging in with the nails that she had finally been able to grow back. Several snapped off as the pressure built and Joyce twisted her hair even tighter. She felt a chunk of hair and scalp give way, the burning sensation almost cold as air rushed over the newly raw spot.

She opened her mouth to scream, hoping against hope that someone in an adjacent apartment would overcome their natural inclination to stay out of other people's business. But Joyce's knee slammed into her throat before she could draw enough breath.

There was a deafening bang from the bedroom, followed by the teeth-rattling buzz and heavy autumn smell she remembered all too well. The lamp by the couch and the TV snapped off, leaving the apartment nearly pitch black except for the halo of light around the front door.

The bitch's hand pulled away from Penny's head, taking another chunk of hair with it. The thud of blows landing on bone and flesh echoed around her. Penny tried to skitter away on her hands and knees, only to bang into someone's legs. Someone squealed in pain above her as another bang echoed off the walls. There was an insanely bright light stabbing her in the face as the front door swung open with a rush of sweet-smelling air. The sound of running footsteps sang out on the linoleum hallway and faded into the distance with the slamming open of the fire door.

  


\---

  
"So the pizza was a lie?"

If she wasn't so busy curling into a ball of agony on the couch, Penny would have glared at Sheldon until his head literally exploded into tiny chunks.

He had finally emerged from the bedroom as the lights and TV snapped back on with a god-awful buzzing noise. Holding a tiny screwdriver like a sword over his head, he froze when he saw Penny writhing on the ground and the coffee table in pieces on the other side of the room.

"Show-off," he'd muttered, a strangely proud note in his voice, before throwing the deadbolt, setting the security bar, and helping her onto the couch.

Now that he had finished scraping the ruined pizza off the floor, he was digging through the meager contents of their fridge looking for something Penny could use to reduce her swelling. Bruises were already rising on her throat and jaw, and oozy blood dotted her scalp where Joyce Kim had pulled out chunks of her mousy brown hair.

On the plus side, her stomach didn't hurt all that much more than it did after a particularly energetic round of drunken vomiting. And once Sheldon left her alone long enough to hobble to the bathroom, where she could gobble down aspirin without his internal-bleeding lecture, even that ache might lessen enough so that she didn't want to die.

Alas, it was not to be.

"We'll need to split up," he announced as he handed her two beers. One can was already cracked open; the other wrapped in a washcloth as a makeshift icepack. He wiped the condensation from the open can on his striped t-shirt.

"Hey, wait," Penny said, catching the tail of it before he could get away. "Is that what you had on earlier?"

"Yes."

"No, it had some giant blue guy wearing a weird hood thing, right about here." She gestured to her own chest, as though it were somehow comparable.

Sheldon sniffed. "I've been wearing this since my opacity was fully restored."

"No, at lunch. You had on a red shirt and a blue shirt and—"

"As if I'd mix disciplines like that."

Penny snapped her mouth shut on the rest of her argument. _And then you kissed me and I kissed you back._ She decided to let him win this one.

"Fine, okay, you're right. What's this about splitting up?" She took a long drink of beer and shifted the other can to the side of her jaw, where she could feel her pulse pounding through every layer of muscle and bone.

He carefully folded his arms and studied a spot on the floor somewhere between them for a moment. "Before I get into that," he said, raising his face to carefully watch her face, "how do you suppose Joyce Kim— _Leonard_ —found us?"

"How should I know?"

Sheldon didn't relent, kept staring a hole right through her forehead.

"I did all the zig-zagging!" Penny protested. "Back over my tracks, changing routes and directions at random intervals. It's not my fault."

But she couldn’t help but think of the scare she'd had that afternoon, before and after which she'd driven in straight lines, like she didn't have a care in the world. She knew Sheldon saw it too. Some hesitation, some minute movement of muscles at her temple or the corner of her mouth.

His lips compressed into a tight line and his arms folded closer to his body. Penny felt an almost overwhelming urge to apologize but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. Sometime in the past few months, she'd finally forgiven him for dragging her into this mess in the first place. She had even come to terms with the fact that it wasn't entirely his fault. That she had made decisions at every turn that put her right smack in the middle of his path, again and again.

She didn't have to tell him all of that, though.

If she weren't watching him as carefully as he was watching her, she might have missed the tiny nod he gave. He unfolded his arms and let his shoulders sag. He still looked tired, but much less than he had that afternoon, oddly enough. After a quick glance at his watch, he cleared his throat and said, "The power surge earlier, when Joyce was here, it blew out the interocitor's temporal circuits. It's useless now. Which means we are too, if she catches us."

He picked up Penny's purse and dumped the contents on the kitchenette's small counter. Before she could yell at him to stop, he was refilling it with some of the clothes he'd folded while she was at work. "We don't have much time. She'll be back soon. With reinforcements."

"What?" Fresh panic was enough to get Penny moving, pushing herself up off the couch with an almighty groan and jamming her feet into the first pair of shoes she found. "We have to get out of here!"

"There's time still," he said, checking his watch again. "And we'll need to split up."

"Why?"

"It'll be harder for them to track us both." When he saw that she was making a beeline for the bedroom, he crossed the room in three giant strides to cut her off.

Penny stopped short to keep from winding up plastered against him. Once a day—once a _lifetime_ —was enough.

Sheldon shoved the purse in her hands and turned her by the shoulders to face the front door.

"You remember the rendezvous point?"

"Sure, the—" Penny caught the name back just in time. _First rule of Fight Club_ ran through her head and she had the insane urge to start laughing and never stop. "Um, yep. Rendezvous point, got it."

"I'll see you there, then." His voice sounded slightly strangled, as though she'd finally made good on her promise to punch him in the throat from so many weeks earlier.

She turned back to him at the door, to ask something that fled as soon as she saw the way he stood in the middle of the room. As if all the air had gone out of it, out of him. Taking all his fight with it. When their eyes met, he started to straighten, to pull some of that fight back around him like a shield. But she'd already seen through it and an awful sense of sadness started to claw at her belly.

Penny shuffled back to stand in front of Sheldon, going up on tiptoe to press her lips against his. She steadied herself with one hand on his shoulder. He stood stock-still, his mouth still and soft under hers. When she pulled away, he made no move to follow, to pull her back to him.

Without another word, she let herself out of the apartment and quickly made her way down to the street. She was blocks away, a stitch burning in her side, when her brain finally caught up to what her instincts had been screaming.

Penny dropped the purse on the ground and spun on her heel. "Oh, God, no. Don't you even _think_ about it."

  


\---

  
Around the corner from the apartment building, Penny slowed to a walk and tried to catch her breath. She sent up a prayer that she'd made it back in time, that she would be able to talk Sheldon into coming with her before Joyce Kim made it back.

But it was already too late. When she turned into the lot she saw a tan Subaru idling at the building's entrance, with the passenger side door wide open. A short man in a brown jacket—the same one she'd seen that afternoon—stood near the rear bumper. When he turned toward her she saw his face clearly and gasped. She hadn't recognized him in the store but now that he wasn't wearing the thick glasses, she saw that he was Sheldon's roommate, Leonard, the one who'd told the police that Penny had set the bomb in their apartment.

Penny knelt between two parked cars at the back of the lot. Her breath sounded like a freight train as she struggled to get it under control. Carefully lifting her head to see over the bushes that separated her hiding space from the wide driveway at the entrance, she realized the car was gone. So was Leonard.

But she hadn't heard them drive off.

She ducked down again. "What the _hell_?"

"Maybe it's magic," Sheldon said. His breath tickled the skin behind her ear.

Penny threw her arms around him so hard they wound up sprawled on the ground. "How did you get out here? I thought—You looked so— Oh, God, Sheldon!" she babbled. "Is she in there? How did you get away? We have to get out of here before the car comes back. Come on, let's—"

But instead of scrambling to his feet as she did, Sheldon just sat up and palmed the interocitor.

"No need," he said, pressing the side of it with his thumb.

Across the lot, the car popped into view again, Leonard once again waiting by the bumper.

Penny's mouth opened and closed but she couldn't make any words come out as Sheldon pressed the interocitor again, and the car winked out of sight.

"Temporal loop," Sheldon said, as if that explained everything. He finally stood and brushed off his pants, grimacing at the dirt that clung stubbornly to the khaki. When he noticed a grease stain on the hem of his blue t-shirt, he gave a tiny gasp.

Looking wounded, he held it out for her inspection. "It's ruined now. And this is a limited edition! I knew I should have worn the...."

He trailed off when he noticed she was still gaping at him. "Penny?"

"Which character is that?" she asked. Her voice sounded reedy and weak, so she cleared her throat. "I don't think I've seen it before."

"Yes, you have," he argued. "I've been wearing it all day—"

"I knew it!" she shrieked, closing the distance between them to sock him in the shoulder. "I thought I was going crazy! You figured out how to work that goddamn thing, didn't you? Why didn't you t—"

Someday, Penny thought dimly, she really needed to find out where he'd gotten the idea that he could win every argument by shutting her up with a kiss.

She pushed him away, feeling breathless and dangerously close to throwing herself at him again like she had that afternoon. She stomped the feeling down somewhere deep and concentrated on how pissed she was instead.

Before she could say anything, though, Sheldon grabbed her shoulder and pushed her down between the cars again. Past the bushes, she saw the car pop up again, then shimmer briefly before fading out again. The interocitor in his hand made a beeping noise.

"We don't have much time," Sheldon said. "The loop's collapsing. If we don't get inside before the car comes back, we might not make it in at all."

He didn't wait for her to answer, just started running for the front door. Cursing all the way, Penny followed as fast as she could. The stitch in her side opened up again and the last few feet passed in a blur of lightheadedness as she gasped for breath.

Sheldon ran past the elevator and pushed open the door for the fire stairs on the far end of the hallway. He waited impatiently for her to catch up but Penny didn't think that was going to happen anytime soon. She collapsed against the wall and waved him on.

"Two seconds," she gasped. "I'll be there... Two seconds." Her lungs were on fire and the ache in her jaw felt like it had engulfed her entire head.

When she looked up, Sheldon was gone.

 _Please don't let him die_ , she pleaded in her head. _Not until I can kill him myself_.

By the time she made it up the two flights of stairs to their floor, Penny was ready to give up. She still couldn't breathe properly and every step sent pain shooting through her side. If Joyce Kim told her to surrender, she would do so gladly, as long as she got to sit down in the meantime.

The apartment door was propped open when she finally staggered to it. Sheldon was sitting on the couch, the interocitor propped on his knee. Standing in the kitchenette and pouring one of her beers down the sink was—

Sheldon.

She didn't even see the floor until it smacked her in the face.

  


\---

  
"I think she's awake," Penny heard from the other end of the cave.

"Go'way," she mumbled.

"Penny, you have to get up."

Hands were poking and prodding at her, so she slapped at them to get away. She heard a rush of breath and a grunt when she made contact with something.

Cracking one eye open, she saw Sheldon crouched on the floor next to her. He had both hands crossed over his crotch and was making the highest-pitched whining noise she'd ever heard in her life.

The other Sheldon—blue Sheldon—hauled her to her feet. Wincing in sympathy, he told her, "He won't forgive you for that for a while."

"Yeah, well, ditto," she snotted. When he tried to lead her toward the couch she slapped his hands away too and limped for the fridge instead. She'd chugged half the first can before striped Sheldon's keening shifted to open-mouthed panting that almost matched hers. He locked eyes with the other him, who smirked.

"You owe him at least seven forfeits to be named at a later date."

Striped Sheldon nodded and shakily got to his feet. He stood slightly hunched over with his hand resting on his thighs as he breathed through his nose in a steady rhythm.

"Fine." Penny shrugged. It was a small price to pay for the satisfaction of getting at least one of them almost as good as she'd gotten that day. There was still the matter of the past three months to make up for, too. And...

"Why'd he make me leave?" she demanded of the Sheldon in the blue shirt.

"I, ah, may have insufficiently explained something earlier. I forgot about...things," he said weakly, fluttering a hand like it was supposed to mean something.

The interocitor around his neck beeped again, drawing everyone's attention. He shook it briefly and grimaced.

"Thirty seconds," he told the other him, who nodded.

"What happens in thirty seconds?" Penny demanded. She dropped the empty beer can in the sink and tried to swallow back the massive bubble of gas that was threatening to escape.

"Joyce Kim," striped Sheldon answered. His voice broke slightly on the woman's first name. Penny ignored the stupid little pang of guilt that thrummed through her.

"But she's gone. She ran out earlier, right?"

Blue Sheldon raised his hand like he was waiting for someone to call on him. "That was me," he said when no one did.

"But—" Penny said stupidly. "I saw her. She—" But had she seen anything? She remembered the burst of light that had nearly blinded her and the sound of footsteps fading into the distance.

"No, you heard me. She didn't go anywhere."

The interocitor chirped, this time, sounding slightly more urgent.

"Fifteen seconds. Are you ready?" he asked the Sheldon in the striped shirt.

Sheldon straightened ever so slightly and held up the interocitor that hung from a braided cord around his neck.

"On my mark."

Penny shook her head. "But that's broken! What are you doing?"

The Sheldon in the blue shirt crossed the room to stand between her and the broken coffee table. When she tried to move around him, he stepped to block her and held up an arm to keep her corralled between the wall, the counter, and him.

"I—He lied. We're going to trap her in another temporal loop. Stay behind me."

On the other side of the room, striped Sheldon said, "Don't touch either of us, no matter what happens."

"What's going to happen? Sheldon—"

Joyce Kim materialized in the middle of the room. She was crouched down, hands held in front of her face in some kind of defensive posture. When she saw the Sheldon in front of her, she sneered.

"I told you we'd get you."

"So you did," said the Sheldon behind her.

When she whirled to face him, her face gone slack with shock, the Sheldon in the blue shirt yelled, "Now!"

In unison, they stepped forward until each of them had a hand wrapped around one of Joyce's arms. Their interocitors started to whine, the same pitch rising and rising until it felt like they were gnawing on Penny's eardrums. Her already battered head was ringing like a bell.

Joyce shouted something that Penny couldn't make out. But the Sheldons heard it, and smiled.

The Sheldon in the striped shirt pressed his thumb to the front of his interocitor and shook it as blue Sheldon did the same. The now familiar buzz and scent filled the room. Penny's hair started to float around her head like the time she stood on the static machine at the state fair.

In the time it took her to blink, Joyce Kim vanished.

Both Sheldons put down their interocitors and turned to Penny, identical smiles creasing their faces.

She cleared her throat. "Is that it?"

  


\---

  
"Well, if you study Novikov," one Sheldon said, before the other interrupted to finish, "or Blinovitch."

Hell, it might have been the same Sheldon. The beer she'd downed was doing terrible things to her vision—or maybe that was because of the blows to her head, or the fact that she hadn't eaten anything since the bowl of plain ramen at lunch.

Whatever it was, Penny was draped along the length of the couch with both eyes firmly closed, for at least the second time that day.

Maybe the third.

"Blinovitch couldn't find a path integral if you drew it on his face," a Sheldon scoffed.

The other agreed.

"I don't really care," Penny finally said. It was nice to hear them talking to each other, especially after so many months of being Sheldon's sole audience. "Let's just call it magic."

One Sheldon protested, loudly, while the other snorted softly and brushed a hand over hers.

That one had to be the Sheldon in blue.

After they'd sent Joyce Kim into what they both insisted was only a semi-permanent time loop, blue Sheldon had explained that once he returned to his own end of the timeline he would be able to break her out. Right into the hands of the authorities, who would also oversee his destruction of his interocitor. Which was also the other Sheldon's interocitor, which spurred them into a confusing round of trying to work out how many points their own loop contained without one Sheldon telling the other things he had either forgotten or shouldn't know yet.

Which was when Penny had given up and abandoned them for the sweet, familiar screams of the couch and its bastard springs.

While she'd still had both eyes mostly open, she had studied both their faces as they talked until she could tell them apart with a glance. Her Sheldon, the one wearing the all-too-familiar striped t-shirt, had his hair combed flat against his head. His face was smooth and still relatively unlined.

The other‐who _also_ appeared to be hers, although in an entirely different way—had a fine web of lines around his eyes that crinkled into full wrinkles when he smiled, which he did a lot more often than she would have expected. His mouth was bracketed with shallow creases that did the same and a tiny scab was just visible in his hairline.

He looked tired, too. Older and tired. She wanted to ask how far in the future he lived, but she already knew he wouldn't answer.

 _Not important_ , she thought as she drifted closer to sleep.

She'd find out eventually.


End file.
